The Last Thing Said
by maggienhawk
Summary: GS Grissom's daughter comforts a friend. First fanfic, please review!


Author: Maggienhawk  
  
Title: The Last Thing Said  
  
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine.but I sure do wish some of them were.  
  
Summary: GSR Grissom's daughter comforts a friend. This is my first fanfic, please review and let me know what you think!  
  
Kristen Grissom slowly walked up to the bench and sat down next to her best friend Emily. "Hey, I thought I would find you up here." Here, was "their spot" on the shore of Lake Mead. The two girls would normally come up here to get away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Las Vegas, to talk together, and to think alone.  
  
Emily looked over to Kristen and gave a small, sad smile. "I.I just needed to get away and think."  
  
"How are you doing?"  
  
"How would you feel if your father was killed?" Emily questioned coolly. At Kristen's frown, Emily realized her mistake. "Oh Kris, I am so sorry. I.I really didn't mean it. It's just that." Emily trailed off.  
  
"It's okay, I've dealt with it. It happened when I was nine. Ten years ago. And that's why I'm here. I want to help you get through this."  
  
Emily's father had just been killed in a car accident two days before, and being the oldest of four children, she was forced to be the strong one, for her siblings and for her mother. However, Emily was 'Daddy's Little Girl' and was taking his death really hard, but couldn't find anyone to grieve to, seeing as they were all worried about the younger kids. "I don't want tomorrow to come. I just.I just want him to be alive."  
  
Kristen moved closer to her friend and took her in a comforting hug. "I know, and tomorrow will probably be the worst day of your life. I'm not going to lie to you, this is going to be so hard, but I want you to know I'll be with you every step of the way."  
  
"I know you will, and I appreciate it. I owe you big time."  
  
"Nah, just a little." Kristen smiled and winked.  
  
"You know almost everything about my dad, but I know almost absolutely nothing about yours. Why don't you ever talk about him?" Emily asked after a few minutes of silence spent looking over the water.  
  
"I don't know. It's not really a hot topic of conversation, I guess. And I know everything about your dad because I've spent half of my life at your house or with your family, at least since the seventh grade." The two girls laughed.  
  
When the laughter subsided, Kristen continued, "I guess I don't really like talking about my dad, because what happened to him was awful and my life changed dramatically when he was killed."  
  
"Will you tell me about him? I just want to know what he was like. Maybe I'll understand some of your quirks a little bit better." Emily smiled.  
  
"I do not have quirks."  
  
"Oh yes you do."  
  
"Whatever." They burst out into another fit of laughter, which continued until Kristen could finally speak again. "Yeah, I'll tell you about him. Maybe it will help keep your mind off stuff for a bit."  
  
Emily smiled again.  
  
"Okay, so my dad's name was Gil. He worked for the Las Vegas Crime Lab."  
  
"Wait! Your mom works there too!"  
  
"Thanks for the newsflash." Kristen smirked. "Yes my mom does work at the crime lab, but my dad worked there first. And if you want to hear anymore of this story I suggest you keep your mouth shut," she scolded in a mock angry tone.  
  
"Okay, okay."  
  
"So, my dad was actually supervisor of the crime lab, and he called my mom in to help out with an internal investigation on one of the other CSIs on his shift. A rookie was killed; I really don't know specifics, except that Mom up and left San Francisco to help out my dad."  
  
"Is that when they first met?"  
  
"No, I think they met at some seminar that he was running while she was a grad student at Harvard."  
  
"Your mom went to Harvard?"  
  
"Yup."  
  
"Wow, but how much older was your dad if he was running the seminar?"  
  
"Fifteen years."  
  
"Oh. Okay continue."  
  
"Thanks for the permission. Well, after the investigation was complete, Dad asked Mom to stay. They were short one CSI, and he could trust her. For the next three years they worked together on the graveyard shift as supervisor and employee. Then one day out of the blue, Dad was walking her out to her car after a really rough case, and he kissed her. Mom remembers that moment like it was yesterday. She had been waiting for awhile for him to face his feelings, and she was completely caught off guard when he kissed her. That was the start of their secret relationship. For six months they kept it from everyone."  
  
"Why did they keep it a secret?"  
  
"It was frowned upon for supervisors to fraternize with their subordinates. The supervisor of the day shift would have had a field day if he had known."  
  
"When did they reveal their secret?"  
  
"The day my mom wore her engagement ring to work. The other members of the team, Catherine, Nick and Warrick, took six hours to realize that she was wearing a new piece of jewelry."  
  
"But its not that obvious to wear a new ring."  
  
"Right, but these people are trained investigators. They are supposed to notice small details like that. Those three never lived it down. Hell, they still joke about it when they all get together."  
  
"I bet your mom makes sure they remember that it took them that long."  
  
"Oh yeah. Whenever Warrick and Nick gang up on her for something stupid she has done, she brings it up, and it shuts them right up."  
  
Emily chuckled, and then asked, "So when did they get married?"  
  
"About six months after they got engaged. It was a small ceremony. I'll have to dig out pictures to show you sometime." Emily nodded and Kristen continued, "About a year after they got married, I was born. Catherine, who was my dad's best friend next to Mom, told me a couple of years ago, that I changed my dad's life. See, he was very weird, actually a loner type of person, just like my mom."  
  
"Quirk Number One explained. Why Kristen enjoys her solitude."  
  
"That's not a quirk!" At Emily's skeptical look, she quickly continued, "Anyway, he loved classical music, reading anything, especially Shakespeare, and he had a degree in entomology."  
  
"As in the study of bugs?" Emily looked disgusted.  
  
"Oh yeah. I thought the same thing. Apparently, my mom did too, but insects are an important factor in determining time of death on a body. As mom once put it, he was 'one of fifteen people in the world to understand it.' He was really good at what he did, and so was Mom. Catherine's told me all about how they used to spend overtime doing experiments together, and they found it absolutely fascinating. Catherine just thought they were odd, but Catherine is the former stripper, and values a less scientific approach to everything."  
  
"Stripper turned CSI.interesting."  
  
"Isn't it? But she's really smart, and a very good people person, canceling out my parent's lack of social skills. However, she's told me that the minute my dad held me, everything changed. He became much more human than he had been in the however many years they had known each other. He opened more to people, and began to realize that he deserved a life outside of bugs, roller coasters, and forensics."  
  
"Roller Coasters?"  
  
"Yup, it was his diversion from the job, until I was born. Being a criminalist is one of the most emotionally draining professions. They encounter anything, from murder to robberies, rape to assault. It just depends on the day." Kristen paused and looked over the water. After a small sigh, she started back up, "I also think, he opened up more to people because he came really close to not being able to have normal interaction with people."  
  
"What happened?"  
  
"He contracted a genetically transmitted disease called otosclorosis. It has to do with his hearing. His mother was deaf from the time she was a kid, so he grew up talking sign language with his mother. However, when his hearing started to kick in and out, he refused to let it affect his life, and more specifically his job. When it was almost too late, he had surgery to correct it, and it was something like 95% successful. But it made him reevaluate the things that were important to him. If he hadn't have gone through the surgery, he would have never heard my mom sing off pitch again, or hear my first words. He probably would have had to quit his job."  
  
After a few minutes of silence, Emily piped up, "So your dad obviously loved his job?"  
  
"Yeah he did, but I think most of it was because of the people he worked with. There was my mom, of course, Catherine, who always knew when and where to speak up, Nick, who was always trying to gain the respect of my dad and Dad always pushed him to work his best, and Warrick, who was his favorite CSI. That was the original bunch, the closest shift my parents had worked with. It was like one big family.  
  
"But over time they split up. Nick was offered a position back in Dallas, where he was from, and he ended up getting married to a really nice woman. They come back and visit every so often. Catherine took over the day shift supervisor position when Ecklie left the lab. It gave her more time to spend with her daughter Lindsey. Warrick stayed on night shift, until it was revealed that he and Catherine had been dating and were planning on getting married, and then he too moved to days, leaving my parents to run the night shift with all the new Vegas CSIs."  
  
"All this happened before your dad was killed?" Emily asked quietly.  
  
Kristen's eyes began to tear up just thinking about what she was about to talk about. "Yeah, I think Warrick and Catherine had been married for about two years. Um." Kristen paused and looked to her best friend in the world. "I've never told anyone this story, so, uh, don't mind if I jumble things."  
  
Emily gave her a small smile indicating that she understood.  
  
"So, one night my parents were working a possible rape/murder case. They were at the home of the victim, doing a preliminary walk through of the scene. Dad walked upstairs to check out the victims bedroom, and uh, Mom , I think stayed downstairs to check out something. I don't really remember what though. So, there's supposed to be specific rules cops are supposed to follow for clearing a crime scene, and well they weren't followed. My mom remembers hearing a loud bang from upstairs, and she ran to the stairs, but Jim, uh, a homicide detective, stopped her so his men could check it out. The police officers chased a man down the back set of stairs in the house, and when he pulled a gun on them, they shot him in the backyard."  
  
"What happened next?"  
  
"Well my mom knew something wasn't right because Dad wasn't coming down the stairs like he should have been, but no one was telling her anything. Jim went upstairs to see what had happened, and came back to my mom, saying she shouldn't go in the bedroom. Well, that just ticked her off more, and you know how my mom is. She's stubborn, and if someone tells her she can't handle something, she'll prove that she can, or at least try to. Well, she pushed past Jim, and was stunned. Lying on the floor, was my father, with one gunshot wound to the back of the head."  
  
Emily gasped. Kristen's tears that had been building up finally fell.  
  
"He had no idea what had happened." Kristen said quietly, and then began to sob just as quiet. Emily moved over to comfort her friend as she had done to her earlier. For the next ten minutes, the girls cried quietly together.  
  
When they had calmed down a bit, Kristen began to get to the major point of her long story. "My mom did not cry until we got home from the funeral. At which point she sobbed for hours. She held me, and would tell me stories through her tears, about all the good times, and even the bad times. She just wanted me to know everything about my dad. She talked for hours that night, and I just sat there and listened, drinking in every word. At nine years old, I knew what it meant to be dead, so I figured this was how I was going to learn about the man that my father was. The next night, my mom came into my room and when she tucked me in, she told me a story about how my dad had told her he didn't become interested in beauty until he had met her."  
  
"Aww, that is so sweet."  
  
"I know, and its one of her favorite moments with him, but I remember it because it was the start of our nightly tradition. For years after my dad died, my mom would tuck me into bed and tell me a new story about him, something I had never heard. It was our way of coping. She had moved to day shift, one to accommodate being a single mother, and two to have the support of the friends that knew her the best while she did the job that took half of her life away. At home, telling stories was her way of loving him, of keeping his memory in my mind, as well as hers. It was only last year when I turned eighteen that she told me the actual story of his death, all I knew was that he had been killed."  
  
"That must have been hard, going through life not knowing exactly how your father was killed." Emily looked at Kristen sympathetically.  
  
"Not really. I would ask sometimes, but Mom always told me that she would tell me when I was old enough to handle the truth. And I trusted her to tell me when the time was right."  
  
"I still couldn't imagine being in your mother's place, walking into that room." Emily trailed.  
  
"Nope, I couldn't either, but while she was stunned, she told me she had felt a strange sense of calm when she saw him."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because the last thing he had told me before they left for work that night was that he loved me. And he had also stopped my mom from getting out of the car at the crime scene, just to kiss her softly, and tell her that he loved her with all of his heart. And the last thing both of us ever said to him was that we loved him. I think she felt complete knowing that he died loving us and with us loving him."  
  
"My mom will never get that chance, to tell my dad that she loves him, and neither will I." Emily began to start crying.  
  
"But he already knew, and he knows that you and your family can make it through this." Kristen comforted her until the sun began to set and they started back to the hustle and bustle of Las Vegas.  
  
The next day, Kristen sat next to Emily during the funeral, and held her hand the whole time. Kristen and Sara came home from the funeral that night, and began to cry together, each telling stories they remember about Gil. A few years later, Kristen walked down the aisle alone, and a few years after that, was always telling her children bedtime stories about their grandfather. And she always made sure her children and her husband knew she loved them, as it was the last thing she told them whenever she left them. 


End file.
